1. I don’t know if Father is aware, but a picture beneath the “Save the Liturgy, Save the World” logo doesn’t show.

2. I don’t like the alignment of the text. In the previous version of the blog, the alignment was justified, and I think it was better than the current one. If I had a vote or a say, I would suggest dropping the new alignment on the left in favor of the justified text.

Thalatta is the Latin-script transliteration, with a rising accent above the first “a”. I’m no Greekling either, but I know enough to read Theta as “th” as in thin, and Tau as a “t”. The “a” would be as in “father”, I believe.

Ah, another something new…we can now directly reply to comments people have made. That could be a little confusing at first as we have been trained to look for all the posts being placed chronologically?

When I try to leave a comment in reply to someone else's comment, the box appears, but I'm not able to put my cursor in the box to type. In the text box is the word 'null'. Is anyone else having this problem? Any suggestions or is this a WordPress issue? I'm on Firefox 3.5.13.

Not sure how hard it would be to do, but I liked how your old format had the posts differentiated from the rest of the background. It made each one stick out better, where they all seem to run together with each other and with the side bar now.

I couldn't help but notice that the new banner graphic includes a detail from a Missal (13th century?) giving the Collect and Epistle (Acts 3) for the Vigil Mass of SS. Peter and Paul (June 28). I can think of various reasons why those texts would be appropriate for this blog…Praesta, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut nullis nos permittas perturbationibus concuti; quos in apostolicae confessionis petra solidasti. Per Dominum nostrum…
And as for the Epistle, it begins, "In those days, Peter and John went up into the temple at the ninth hour of prayer"! Vincenzo has skills.

In the days of our forefathers, when most students learned at least a smattering of Latin in high school, Julius Caesar’s “Gallic Wars” was the text of choice for teaching the language; it was well suited to this purpose because of Caesar’s elegant, yet straight-forward style. He wrote as an educated, yet no-nonsense soldier, and told of his astounding conquests in a very compelling fashion.

In the days of our fore-grandfathers, however, many high school students also learned some ancient Greek. For this, the text of Xenophon’s Anabasis was used, for the same reasons as above. The March of the Ten Thousand, in about 2,400 B.C., is one of the greatest stories of adventure and survival in all of human history; yet sadly, because of its removal from the curriculum, it is virtually unknown today.

Until, that is, Fr. Z resurrected that famous quote from its climactic scene. May long-dead Xenophon (who, like Aristotle and Seneca, was considered a “worthy pagan” by the ancient Church fathers) smile upon him.

Yeah, very nice new format Fr Z – thanks for your efforts. My suggestion concerns the background colour of pages – stark white is a bit hard on the eyes for a lot of reading. A less stark colour would be easier on the eyes eg #FFFFCC (R=255 G=255 B=204).

With regards to the icon, I did nothing to get mine to show up, but the picture displayed is my Facebook profile picture. So there must be some connection somehow? I was suprised when I saw it, because I literally have not touched my profile for this site…

It is great that your blog is a place on the internet to repeat a joke made by Ronald Knox. In the dispute between attic and doric greek, Knox was asked whether Xenophon said Thalatta or Thalassa. He answered "The latter"

The Anabasis isn’t obscure! Sheesh, any 2nd grade girl crazy about horses who’s read Marguerite Henry’s White Stallion of Lipizza knows all about Xenophon. Ditto any mystery fan (the poison honey) and anybody who reads military science fiction (Anabasis retellings are almost as common as Belisarius do-overs).

Suburban: The Anabasis is a ripping good yarn. And the Greek isn’t all that hard, compared to some other writers.

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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z

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- Pius XI

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

- 2 Chronicles 7:14 RSV

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"We as Catholics have not properly combated (the culture) because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention... What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity... Charity means speaking the truth. I have encountered it (not speaking the truth) many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence — people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not 'politically correct.' But we cannot be silent any longer."

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"Where priest and people together face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also in interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of resurrection and trinitarian theology. Hence it is also an interpretation in terms of parousia, a theology of hope, in which every Mass is an approach to the return of Christ."

"In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. ... If all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians." CDF 2003

One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.
— C. S. Lewis

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"One of the few things in life you can be absolutely sure about is that, if Management tells you it doesn't like your Tone, you are getting something right."

"Latin is a precise, essential language. It will be abandoned, not because it is unsuitable for the new requirements of progress, but because the new men will not be suitable for it. When the age of demagogues and charlatans begins, a language like Latin will no longer be useful, and any oaf will be able to give a speech in public and talk in such a way that he will not be kicked off the stage. The secret to this will consist in the fact that, by making use of words that are general, elusive, and sound good, he will be able to speak for an hour without saying anything. With Latin, this is impossible."

- - Giovanni Guareschi

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Let us pray…

Grant unto thy Church, we beseech
Thee, O merciful God, that She, being
gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may
be in no wise troubled by attack from her
foes.
O God, who by sin art offended and by
penance pacified, mercifully regard the
prayers of Thy people making supplication
unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of
Thine anger which we deserve for our sins.
Almighty and Everlasting God, in
whose Hand are the power and the
government of every realm: look down upon
and help the Christian people that the heathen
nations who trust in the fierceness of their
own might may be crushed by the power of
thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world
without end. R. Amen.

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I carry one of these super-strong rosaries in my spare mag pouch! The Swiss Guards have them too!

The Swiss Guard have these rosaries!For the story clickHERE and HERE (esp. 18:00)

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Food For Thought

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

For your consideration…

"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."

- C.S. Lewis

More food for thought:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Francis Card. George

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"It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive."

Charles Pierre PéguyNotre Patrie, 1905

"If I ought to write the truth, I am of the mind that I ought to flee all meetings of bishops, because I have never seen any happy or satisfactory outcome to any council, nor one that has deterred evils more than it has occasioned their acceptance and growth."

St. Gregory Nazianzus
ep. 131 - AD 382

“We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

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Food For Thought

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

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